Long before Cabbage Patch Kids, Europeans were already finding imaginary babies among the vegetables.

For generations, adults faced with the awkward question of where babies came from offered more picturesque explanations. Storks delivered them. Babies could be found near wells and ponds. And in parts of Europe, particularly France, they could be discovered among the cabbages.

The idea became embedded in French folklore and language. “Naître dans les choux” means “to be born in the cabbages,” and vintage French postcards show infants peeking out from enormous cabbage heads. In one version of the story, boys came from cabbages and girls from roses.

Why cabbages? No one knows for certain. They were common in European gardens and had long associations with fertility. Their large, tightly wrapped heads also made them a plausible hiding place, at least by the standards of folklore.

The story even appeared at the birth of cinema.

In 1896, pioneering French filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché made La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy), based on the familiar idea of babies emerging from cabbages. Guy-Blaché went on to make hundreds of films and is recognized as one of the earliest filmmakers to use cinema to tell fictional stories.

Nearly a century later, the old folklore became extraordinarily profitable. Artist Xavier Roberts built the Cabbage Patch Kids around the idea of babies discovered in a magical cabbage patch. The dolls came with names and birth certificates and were “adopted” rather than purchased. By 1984, the Cabbage Patch product line was expected to generate more than $500 million in annual sales.